Altirium Data Recovery Blog

Archive for June 30th, 2009

It is very easy to accrue data, and with large diverse systems it is very easy to accrue very large volumes of the stuff from a wide range of different places. The problem comes when you want to get the data from this massive archive and onto a new format of tape to be accessed via a new system.

The more complex the system the more pitfalls when attempting to migrate the data. Where data is being streamed from multiple sources a technique known as multiplexing is often preferred as this gives the best use of the bandwidth available for data backup. The problem comes with restoring as each data set is potentially spread across multiple tapes, and the restore process using the originating backup software might well require that each set be restored individually and so you can end up having to read each tape multiple times. This effectively means that if you have an archive of 1000 tapes, you have to read 5,000 or 10,000 tapes to restore everything.

Read the rest of this entry »